What gives me the right to be Sarah Husain?

What right do any of us have to be who we are, and to be from where we are from. I love London, with all my heart and I will always love London, forever feeling it is where I belong. But I don’t understand when some people say phrases such as, “I’m proud to be a Londoner” or “I’m proud to be British.” What exactly have you done for London? What have you achieved to feel this pride?

The answer for most people is nothing.

You have no choice in deciding who you are or where you are from. You did not choose to be born into your family or to be born in whatever country you are from. Absolutely none. It was chance that you are who you are. So nationalism and patriotism is a load of crap to me. It’s not justifiable to be proud of something you have no control over.

This is something that’s always irritated me, but it’s been irritating me even more in light of recent events. There is clearly a media bias for which current tragedies are reported about, which can particularly be seen with social media, and this is very wrong to me. Are the tragedies of the western world more important than the tragedies of the rest of the world? My frustration is directed at a lot of people within the Western world who, when incidents such as the Paris attack, extensively mourn and show “solidarity”, however, when a similar incident in Beirut occurs, no one bats an eyelid. When a tragedy in Mali occurs, no one changes their Facebook profile pictures.

When I ask "why do you care for Paris more than Beirut?" the answer is commonly “Because I’m from the Western World, and Paris is close to me.” To me, this doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t matter where a tragedy has occurred, or whether it is in a warzone or not. If any human life is attacked or lost, it is a tragedy. It’s immoral to me to care for one group over another for such a trivial reason. It doesn’t matter where I am from, I will always care for people in London and Paris just as much as people in Japan Palestine or Syria.